


Blue Are The Songs Of Despair

by ArwenLune



Series: Shades of Blue [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Female Character of Color, Gen, Mourning, Post-X3, Suicidal Thoughts, character evolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystique returns home, and becomes Raven again.</p><p>
  <i>"Don't you ever get tired of wearing other people's faces?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She feels a burst of genuine anger for the first time in weeks, and years of training haven't completely abandoned her. She spins and kicks high, catching him under the chin. His head snaps back and he grunts, but she can't follow through, his grip on her wrist is too tight. She instinctively reaches to shift, slide herself out of his iron grip, but there is that gaping hole inside of her, the ability she no longer has, and it takes her breath, raw and painful. She stutters to a halt.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for suicidal thoughts! Mystique is in a dark place and this story is in essence about her finding a way forward and out. It's ultimately an uplifting character arc, but please keep yourself safe if this subject is sensitive to you.

"Have you come to gloat?"

 

 The gruff voice startles her a little, he's closer than she'd expected him. At least is IS the Wolverine. She thinks she can get him where she wants him. Much easier than Storm, and she hadn't even wanted to contemplate Hank.

She doesn't look up from the headstone.

 

 _No_ , she wants to say. _I loved him. Did from the moment he found me. No matter how infuriatingly naive and passive he was. No matter how hypocritical, when my results suited him but he condemned me for my methods. I never stopped_.

 

But she has come here with two goals, and the first she has just fulfilled.

 

She tears her eyes away from the headstone and pastes an unpleasant smile onto this hated face.

 

"Had to see it for myself," she drawls. Then, looking around, "I like what you've done with the place. I hear graveyard chique is all the rage in modern landscaping."

 

He has come a few threatening steps closer, and she relishes his clenched fists.

 

"Why are you here?"

 

"Like you said, to gloat," she says, aiming for cruel nonchalance. She doesn't feel it quite has the right nuance, but judging by his growl, it's good enough. "Had to make sure the cueball was really gone."

 

She bites down on the sob in her throat, regretting that choice of words. She had called him that, the last time she saw him - her irreverent nickname for the venerable professor that was once her floppy-haired older brother. It had made him grin. The memory is raw and close.

 

She shoves the thought away, because Logan is where she wanted him, up close and approaching boiling point.

 

"Get out," he grits. "Get the fuck out of here."

 

"Or you'll what?" she asks sweetly.

 

He strikes like a snake, and once she would have anticipated the motion and turned into it, but some of her speed and agility was her mutation, and gone now. And anyway, she has no intention of defending herself. He yanks her wrist behind her back.

 

"Don't you ever get tired of wearing other people's faces?"

 

She feels a burst of genuine anger for the first time in weeks, and years of training haven't completely abandoned her. She spins and kicks high, catching him under the chin. His head snaps back and he grunts, but she can't follow through, his grip on her wrist is too tight. She instinctively reaches to shift, slide herself out of his iron grip, but there is that gaping hole inside of her, the ability she no longer has, and it takes her breath, raw and painful. She stutters to a halt.

 

He is behind her now, heavy arm around her throat, and she feels the pressure against the arteries. His other hand is against her chest over her heart, and she can feel the tips of his claws pressing against her skin.

 

"I should just-" he growls in her ear.

 

She vaguely, lightheaded thinks

 

 _Yes._

 **  
_Please_   
**   
_._

Then there is only blissful darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't even really a chapter, more like an image that really wants to be in here.

The dark-haired woman is standing at Xavier's memorial stone, her eyes on the copper portrait. She wears a fancy business suit that is at least a size too large, and hasn't been cleaned in a while. Her feet are bare and grubby.  
Logan draws in a slow breath and realises why she seems familiar. Mystique. He'd recognise her scent anywhere.

***

She always did know how to push his buttons. He watches her face as she goes still against him, watches her eyes for the first sign of amber-yellow, but it never comes. Her body goes slack as she sinks into unconsciousness, but she does not change to her own shape. He is so startled he almost drops her.

"...the fuck?"


	3. Chapter 3

She's home, the only home she'd ever known. The room tells her, the arm around her says so. She is ten and Charles has crawled into her bed after he'd felt her nightmare. It's warm and safe, and she drifts there for a while.

 

But the arm fades.

 

"He always hoped she'd come back some day," a deep voice is saying on the other side of the door. Hank.

 

"After she tried to kill him? After she--" a female voice. That has to be Storm.

 

"They were still in contact. Letters a few times a year. And I know he visited her, when she was impersonating senator Kelly. There's an unfinished letter to her on his desk. I know he-"

 

"Look, I know they had history, but would the professor really-"

 

"You wanna let me in on that?" Wolverine, gruff and impatient.

 

"She's his sister," Hank explained. "She was with him long before Magneto, or me."

 

"Huh."

 

"Look, I don't relish the thought of having her in the house either," Hank continues. "But Charles always kept the door open, hoping she'd change her mind someday. I'm not about to slam it shut in her face."

 

Raven waits for Wolverine to mention that she hadn't exactly come because she'd changed her mind, but he doesn't say anything.

 

She pulls her knees up against her chest and tries not to feel like she's twenty, and a disappointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why why WHY am I writing sad angsty fic about a part of canon I usually pretend never happened?


	4. Chapter 4

She flees from the mansion the first chance she gets. It's home, but it's also full of people to whom she is the enemy, and it's oppressive. There's a game observation post on the far side of the grounds behind the lake. This is where she holes up, in the silence of the forest. After a few days she walks into town to buy a tent, and a proper sleeping bag, and a small camping stove. It's late summer, she doesn't need much.

 

After three weeks she admits to herself she is not going anywhere, and orders a larger tent, a geodesic dome structure. She takes wood and tools from the lakehouse workshop to make a floor platform. One morning Logan is there, with a stepladder, and he helps her raise the dome frame. They don't say anything.

 

Autumn is coming fast, and she has planted the vegetables she can think of that will do well over winter. Cabbage. Carrots. Beets. She doesn't actually like beets, but self-sufficiency lures. Sometimes, Logan brings her a crate full of shopping. She grumbles at him to hide the shameful gratefulness, and he flips her the bird with a grin. They don't say much.

 

They are getting to know this face at the recycle centre in town, even put aside a particularly good pair of shoes for her once. She wears them when she goes there, to please them - she doesn't like the feel on her feet. As soon as she's home, she takes them off. They have clothes there - and she still hates the feel of them, but jogging trousers and t-shirts aren't so bad - and kitchenware, and even an old fridge and a sink. They offer to put the stuff in their van for her, and she has them drop her off at along the road that runs past the small, hidden back gate. The driver frowns at the idea of leaving her in the middle of nowhere, but she insists. It takes her the rest of the day to get the stuff to the dome.

 

She finds a book on basic electrician work and teaches herself enough to install safe wiring from the observation shack to the dome. When that's done, she looks into plumbing. The little outside latrine will do for now, but running water would be nice.

 

By half october she has furniture, part from the recycle centre, part made with her own hands. It's a little rough and the chairs wobble, but she didn't have to ask for it, and that matters.

 

Kurt comes to visit her, and they sit together on the wobbly chairs and eat bread and cheese. He reads to her from the bible, but she doesn't hear all of it. Inside her head it echoes with _sorrysorrysorry I was alone and scared and I was trying to pass and Azazel was gone or I would have brought you to Charles I'm so sorrysosorrysosorry._

 _  
_

When he leaves he gives her a smile she doesn't deserve, and she cries for days.

 

Late october the temperatures plummets, and Logan comes rumbling down the overgrown track in the old Landrover, and lifts a cast iron woodstove out the back. He has also brought tiles for under it and the tent pieces needed to safely put a chimney through the canvas roof. She has long since learned that protesting will have absolutely zero effect, and climbs the inside of the frame instead, surprised that her body will still do that, and installs the chimney. They eat cabbage and rice as the stove heats up the dome, and they don't say much.

 

Then one day Rogue comes to visit.

 

They exchange stilted, awkward words, but Raven can't even hear herself speak for the pounding of the words in her head _. Sorry sorry sorry so sorry_ , over and over in the cadence of hurried footsteps. It can't have been entirely wrong though. When the young woman leaves there's softness in her shoulders, lightness in her walk. Rogue is no longer burdened by her mutation, and it's a wry, twisted thing that what is causing her so much pain is a blessing to Marie. Raven wonders if she would once have felt the same, presented with a cure. When she was 21 and only her blonde form was acceptable and she just wanted to be _normal_. Probably.  
Now she still cries at the phantom limb of shapeshifting, at every time she instinctively reaches for it and finds only the frayed edges of it, whipping in the wind.

 

Kurt keeps coming, and she grows less anxious around him. They speak about faith and anger and acceptance, and then he asks her about his father, and she finds herself travelling back to thirty years ago, when she first met Azazel, when it still seemed that if they did the right things, mutants would find a place in the world.

 

When he leaves he gives her a smile, and she tentatively smiles back.

 

Rogue comes back, one day, bringing one of the other kids.

 

"I thought you oughta meet," she says in her soft drawl.

 

The boy is Jimmy, she recognises him from the files. The one where it all started. The boy who negates mutations. He gives her a shy, worried look.

 

"Come in."

 

She sees he fears her anger, but she's run out of anger months ago. If she still has any it's for the people who forced their cure upon her, not for the mutant who is simply how he was born. Accepting mutants includes accepting him.

 

She shakes his hand and stills, shivering at the feeling. It's as if a thick, soft blanket falls over the gaping wound of her mutation, and for a moment she doesn't miss it but never had it in the first place.

  
She wonders how it's possible that the stuff they injected her with differs from the effect he has. Did they deliberately make it more painful? Being around the boy isn't so bad.


	5. Chapter 5

Late autumn is taken up by stockpiling wood. Logan helps her fell some trees that need thinning out, but she does the sawing and chopping herself, relishing in the simple-minded physicality of it. She doesn't need to think, when she's chopping, and her body does what she needs it to.

When it's all done it's mid December and she sits in her light, round home and wonders why on earth she did any of it. She hadn't come here to build a life - she had come to let Wolverine take it away, and she can't quite figure out how she's ended up here.

Worst thing is that now she's stuck. There's plenty of opportunity - the lake, rope, tall trees, electricity - and she has considered these things, over and over. But she can't be certain one of the kids wouldn't find her, because inexplicably there's not many days that one of them doesn't come see her. If she could be sure Logan would find her... she thinks he would understand. Even if he doesn't, he's seen enough in his long life to deal with what needs dealing with. But the kids hike the mile around the lake to come see her, even when there's snow on the ground.

Kurt comes most of all, and she's surprised how much they have to say to each other now that the sheer force of her guilt has abated. Mother to son, but also person to person they have made a connection that she'd never known she'd want this much.

To her utter surprise Marie also keeps coming, as if she finds something here, in their discussions about mutations and acceptance and self acceptance. Perhaps she does, and Raven finally admits to herself that she does too.

Jimmy visits, and she realises his visits are a relief to him, a break from the strange dynamic at the mansion where some of the kids want to be around him all the time as a relief from their mutations, and some avoid him completely because he dampens what makes them themselves. He's a grave, serious lad, and surprisingly astute for a 14-year old. They theorise about the difference between the dampening effect of his mutation and what the 'cure' - they both use a wry tone - does. He is also the one to point out that not all of her talents are in her mutation.

"Just looking like somebody isn't enough," he says. "You must be a really good observer and actress to be able to copy somebody's mannerisms, their way of moving, and their voice, enough not to be found out. "

She tries not to think of Senator Kelly's wife, and allows that that's true, though she's not ever thought of it separately from her mutation. He challenges her to impersonate somebody, and she picks Logan, who is distinct and familiar enough for the both of them. She reaches instinctively for a shift, but this close to the boy it doesn't feel raw and painful.

"You wanna get on with it, bub?"

The voice doesn't sound even nearly right to her, it's herself but lower and gruff. The tone and cadence and words must be right though, because Jimmy has huge eyes.

"That is AMAZING!" he laughs, delighted. "You moved like him too. All--" he mimics wide shoulders. "Can you do others?"

She indulges him, because why the hell not, with Yoda and Gandalf and Gollum. The few moments of normality in the past thirty years have been occasional trips to the cinema, windows into others worlds. They're not unhappy memories, if a little bittersweet.

When the boy has said his cheerful goodbye, she allows the memory.

Charles  had, one of the handful of times they had spent together since she left, shown her something. A memory that never happened, he'd said. An alternate reality memory. In it, he and Erik, in their late thirties, strong and healthy, had been playfighting with broomsticks on the front green of the mansion. She herself, blue and happy, was circling them and making lightsabre noises.  

She had felt the sheer longing of his mind against her own, and shared it. Longing for a possibility long past, a road never trodden.

 _Oh Charles_ , she thinks, her eyes painfully dry. There is nothing more to say.

 

The next day Jimmy visits again, a few others kids behind him, warily looking around at the patch of vegetable garden, the rough wooden bench outside, and the snow-covered dome tent. They're the older students, and she tries to still a twitch of anxiety, because they certainly have no cause to like her. Bobby is there, almost a man, and the big lad - Piotr? - and the Pryde girl, and Rogue.

"Jimmy says you do voices," Bobby says with a challenge in his tone. He holds out his mobile phone.

She raises an eyebrow at him - it's not what she expected. Then again, his anger is mostly on behalf of Marie, and Marie isn't angry anymore.

She pushes the record button and finds her Yoda voice.  
"Do, or do not leave a message. There is no try."

Just like that, they adopt her.


	6. Chapter 6

"Kids've been talking about wanting you over for Christmas dinner," Logan says the next time he comes over. Raven nearly falls out of the top of the dome, where she's been climbing, doing pull-ups. There's an itch under her skin that never quite goes away, but it quietens when she pushes herself.

"'Ro and Hank said to tell you that you're welcome, if you want to come."

She dangles upside down from the pullup bar and just stares down at him. He cracks a grin and gets a beer from the fridge, puts another block of wood on the stove, and settles on the couch. She can admit to herself that she likes the way he's at home in her space, how he uses it to come hang out when the busy mansion feels too confining. He keeps beer in her fridge and one of his books - Don Quixote of all things - is on the sidetable.

Of all the Xmen she's known he understands her best, understands what drove her. Has himself raged against the stifling scruples of her brother. Logan has done his share of killing, carries his share of regrets.

"You and I," he'd said, gesturing with his beer bottle, "we're very good at what we do. It's just that what we do ain't very nice."

Sometimes you did the things that needed doing. Even though Charles hadn't always agreed with the methods, there'd been times he had eagerly reaped the results.

She swings down from the bar, landing almost silently in a deep crouch, and smiles at herself, pleased that her body will still do these things.

"They said that?"

"Yeah. And none of that Good Samaritan stranger-at-the-table shit-" she scratches her forehead and smiles at the way he forestalls her objection, "- the kids have decided you're part of us, and 'Ro wanted you to know she agrees."

Raven isn't so sure of that - she and Storm haven't exchanged more than a handful of words since she arrived, and most of them polite but cool hello's. But she recognises the gesture for what it is, and nods.

"Okay."

 

The mansion is full of life in a way she's never felt it before. She's been here a few times since she left, but she's never been _welcome_ , and this time Rogue smiles when she opens the door. Kurt has brought her right to the front door. He'd correctly guessed she might be nervous, and had teleported to her dome to 'save her the walk through the snow' but they both know it's really to stop her from changing her mind.

She'd found some acceptable clothes, a comfortably stretchy pair of black slacks and a black blouse. She'd balked at shoes, and grins when Rogue shivers at the sight of her bare feet in the snow.

Charles is an almost palpable presence at the long table, humming between them, and while the younger children chatter most of the older ones occasionally sink into silence. To Raven there seems almost no distance between the weeks she spent here with her brother and Erik and Alex, Sean and Hank - as if she has blinked and thirty years dissolved. From there to here. From insecure, self-loathing Hank to Secretary of Mutant Affairs McCoy, with a booming laugh and an expansive manner that inspires hero worship in the eyes of some of the kids, especially the ones with visible mutations. It's enough to make her chest ache with longing for the time when she belonged here.

She eats quietly, trying to stay in the background. She's been on heavy painkillers a few times and it didn't dull the pain, but it made it more distant - this almost feels the same. She feels hollow and like she is out of phase with the rest of them. Thankfully the kids around her don't seem to notice. Logan does, but she knows he'll let her drift at the edges.

There is a break after the main course is finished, because you simply cannot keep thirty young people sitting at a table for an entire evening, and a lot of them disappear to play a traditional game of hide and seek. It's been announced that Hank will read them a story during dessert, like Charles used to, and Raven quietly slips out. It's too much, too raw, to see Hank take her brother's role like that.

She's at the heavy front doors when Ororo catches up.

"Hey."

"Hey," she turns around, uncertain what to say. "I'm sorry I..." she indicates the door. "...I don't think I can..."

"It's all right," the other woman says softly. "It's difficult for all of us. It's..  I'm glad you came."

"Thank you for inviting me."

Neither of them says anything more, and Raven turns to the door to leave.

"Hey... Logan says you're training," Ororo calls, hand on the door that leads back into the dining hall. "If you want to, you can use the gym here. Get him to show you."

 

She watches New Year celebrations from in front of the dome, and recognises Jubilee's fireworks as they crackle against the sky. It's a little foggy, presumably Ororo's work to conceal the unconventional fireworks from far-off observers. At midnight she opens one of Logan's beers, but doesn't know what to toast to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, this story keeps growning...


	7. Chapter 7

She finally gets up the nerve to make use of the offer five days into the new year, when it feels like she will burst out of her skin if she doesn't get moving. Logan shows her around the underground level of the mansion, both of them trying to ignore that she has been there, once, when she came to sabotage Cerebro.

There is a large room with one half full of gym equipment - and mirrors, which makes her twitch. She hates looking at this face. The other half is like an oldfashioned gymnasium, with rings, ropes to climb, wallracks, and thick mats on the ground.

She's never been one for machines, and chooses to avoid that side of the gym entirely, opting for stretches on the mat side. When she's a little warmed up, she experiments with tumbling, starting with a short series of slow handsprings. She's pleased to find her body will still obey her in this, though her muscle tone has changed and she doesn't quite have the flexibility she used to. It feels _right_ , like the world has colour and scent and sound just as it ought to.

She pauses to wipe sweat from her neck and notices Logan is watching her from across the room, where he is lifting weights. There's frank appreciation in the way his eyes follow her, and she scratches her arm, feeling a little off balance all of a sudden. She's been looked at like that before - in the various forms she adopted and occasionally in her own blue form - but her head is so profoundly not in that place these days that it just unnerves her. She tries to shake off the thought and turns to climb a rope, legs swung up so she's only using her arms.  

 

"You wanna spar?" Logan says about fifteen minutes later, not unexpectedly. They've never sparred, only fought, but they're well matched, and she thinks they like one another well enough, and have enough mutual respect, to manage true sparring.

At least she hopes so, she's definitely not on her game the way she used to be.

He seems to know that, opens with none of the hammer-force strikes she's felt from him in the past. In training he is far smoother than she would ever have given him credit for, than she would have thought possible for a man like him.

The one time she'd sparred with Sabretooth she'd only escaped a mauling by vaulting onto his back and using her legs to lock his elbows behind his back while she choked him out. Victor could spar precisely until the moment where he wasn't dominating anymore, when his survival instincts kicked in.

Logan is smooth and almost light, and seems to have no problem with being put in a bad spot.

"I train with the girls," he says, noting her surprise.

She grins and sweeps him, and when he takes her down with him, vaults over him. But instead of the neat roll she plans she lands on her back, her wrists still in his hands.

"Fuck!"

"We're gonna need to teach you how to break grips," he grins, getting up and easily pulling her to her feet along with him. "Did you never have to do that before?"

"I could just shift my wrists a little thinner and slippier," she admits.

"I remember how hard it was to hold on to you."

They train on breaking grips until her wrists are sore and bruised. She's still not used to the strange colouring of her skin, where it would only be darker, before.

Logan seems a little startled by the sight of it too, because he switches to light sparring, not locking his hands. Letting her aerial style work its full effect against his solid, grounded fighting. She's not sure, but she thinks he might simply enjoy it. When she avoids a punch by flipping backward into a handspring, kicking him under the chin as her legs go over, he makes a sound of surprise and what might be approval.

 

"You have a special arrangement with gravity," he grins when she bounces upright.

His next attack she avoids by using the wallframe as a jumpoff to land in a crouch behind him. She vaults away as he whips around, and a small burst of laughter escapes her.

"You have no tail!" she blurts, amused at her own reflex.

"It's one of my more defining characteristics, yeah," Logan deadpans, a little out of breath. "Why?"

"Nothing, it's just... I did most of my training with somebody who had a tail, and liked to use it against me. Apparently I'm expecting you to have one too."

"Ah. Kurt's father?" he guesses.

"Yeah." She opens a new attack.

"Whatever happened to him?"

It's blunt, in that way he has, but she doesn't mind. A well-calculated flip has her end up on his back, and she hurriedly locks her arm around his throat in a choke, her legs pinning his arms against his ribs. He grunts in surprise.

"He got out of the life," she answers, conversationally. He grins, and taps her leg to signal his surrender.

In fact Azazel opened a restaurant in Moscow a couple of years ago. Called it 'Dining with the Devil', which had made her laugh like a drain when he told her. Apparently it's very popular with rich Moscovites, to whom flirting with the exotic and dangerous indicates status, and he's happy.

She's half considered getting in touch with him again, but she isn't sure how he'll react to her new face. He'd always liked her own, blue form most. And she thinks he might go to Erik to express his displeasure with the way he'd treated her, which would, no matter how angry she is with Erik, be a bad thing. Azazel and Erik hadn't parted on the best of terms, and Azazel had a tendency to express his displeasure.. permanently. Terminally. She had loved him, at one time, and she still likes him, but she has no illusions about what sort of man he is.

Where her own kills had been considered moves for the cause, and never, no matter what Charles may have thought, lightly - Azazel had less scruples.

Still, it would be nice to give him and Kurt the opportunity to meet. The boy could do with more confident, unashamed physically mutated role models in his life. And she's curious about the restaurant. He always was a great cook.

Perhaps it's the thought that distracted her, or perhaps she's simply getting tired and out of breath, but his next attack seems much harder to fend off, and when she vaults, her landing makes her muscles burn with fatigue.

He gets a chokehold on her, and just like that she stills, body sagging against him until his arm at her throat is holding her up. She shudders at the onslaught of that low, insistent voice that has been whispering ever since the dart found her skin. It's a voice she's decided she doesn't have it in her to act upon, but when the choice is in somebody else's hands it is still overwhelmingly seductive.

 _Yesyesyes do it end it yes do it do it NOW_

"That, still?" Logan has spun her to face him, hands on the sides of her neck to hold her upright, thumbs under the line of her jaw. She locks her knees and stares at him, non-comprehending for a hazy moment. There's no pity in his eyes, but there's more sympathetic sadness than she feels comfortable with, and she steps back out of his grip, turning away from him.

He doesn't hover - of course, he wouldn't. She shakes her head, rolls her shoulders, scratches the back of her neck. Tries to disrupt that seductive voice and shove it back into silence. It takes a few minutes and some breathing exercises until she feels ready to face him again.

"Hey, I was wondering how you did the switch, just before you got my back. I thought I had you there," he says, slightly too stilted like he's thought through this question in advance. "Can you show me?"

She knows he is trying to distract her, but she welcomes it.

They are doing slow-motion sparring when Storm and Hank enter the gym, clearly just coming out of a session in the danger room. Raven tries not to freeze under Hank's gaze. She is no longer twenty. His approval - or disapproval - does not define her.

"Hey guys," Logan says.

Storm shoots them a smile and a little wave as she heads for the crosstrainer. Hank stands at the door, watching them. Raven tries to ignore his eyes on her back, forces herself to focus on the technique she is showing Logan. When Hank finally leaves it feels like relief, and that makes her sad. If she can get along with Logan and Storm and most of the kids, shouldn't she be able to get along with him?

Then again, he was there when she abandoned Charles. And he was there for her brother afterward, quite likely remembers her betrayal keenly.

When she gets to the bench where she'd put her towel, there's a small tube of steroid cream on her towel, and a note that reads _'for that rash'_ in his neat handwriting. She smiles slightly. Maybe things aren't as hopeless as she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day may come, that I attempt to write vaguely similar-length chapters. But it is not this day!


	8. Chapter 8

She showers in the rarely-used facilities in the gym - Logan just goes to his room - and then, tired and more comfortable in her skin, settles down in the small computer room Storm had given her permission to use.

Her Russian is limited, but a quick google search confirms that Dining With The Devil does still exists, and even thrives. Apparently Azazel has befriended some very powerful people, and their patronage ensures the safety of himself, his restaurant and its patrons, mutant or human. Raven suspects it's a bubble that probably faces quite a bit of resistance, but it's something unique nonetheless. She wonders if she and Kurt could go eat there out in the open.

It takes a while to realise that she herself is no longer blue.

 

 

She hears the girls before they announce themselves with an awkward clearing of the throat.  Marie and... she runs through her mental file of the kids  in the school. One of the visibly mutated kids, a girl seemingly stuck en route between human and wolf. She remembers her face from Christmas dinner, but the name won't come to her.

"Hey Raven," Marie smiles. "This is Rahne."

Raven swivels her chair to face the girls and raises an encouraging eyebrow. Rahne looks young, perhaps fourteen - though it's hard to tell. She is looking at her feet.

"Hi," she finally says, looking up at Raven and mustering a shy smile. "People keep saying that you're really good at... that you're a really good actress. And I've always..." she trails off. "They say you can't be an actor when you're a mutant, that nobody would hire me, but..."

Christ, has somebody primed the girl, given her the exact words that would rouse her? Logan? Or maybe Hank, who knows who she was at twenty and knows who she became. Knows very well that the implication that you can't do something because you're a mutant is like a red rag to a bull to her.

She watches the girl silently for a long moment, taking in the features covered by a fine coat of grey-brown hair.

"Rahne hoped you would give her acting lessons," Marie finally says, a little nervous-fidgety. "Well... us?"

"We can do that," Raven nods after another long moment. Both girl's faces lights up. "Come to my place on.. whatever afternoon works for you. I'm usually around."

"Okay," Rahne says softly.

"That reminds me," Marie fishes around in a pocket of her cardigan. "With the weather an' all it doesn't seem to make sense to walk all the way over to ask you somethin', and Kurt isn't always available, so would you..." she holds out a cellphone "..mind taking this?"

Raven stares at it.

"It's Jubes' old phone, and I had a free pay-as-you-go card with some credit on it," she explains hastily. "That way we can call ahead to see if it's a good time, you know?"

It feels like she's being handed an anchor, something more to tether her to the school, and she hesitates, not sure if she wants to be that tied up. She'd never planned to come here, to get attached to people - or let them get attached to her. She's been on the move so long she isn't sure she can still take root anywhere, and if she could, if she wants it to be here.

But Marie is giving her such an earnest, hopeful look, and Rahne looks excited about acting lessons, and..

"Don't expect me to carry it all the time like you lot do," she says, resigning herself to this new tether and putting the phone into her pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next one will be a long one again..


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a heavy chapter. Erik doesn't come off so well here - I tend to think that XMFC has made us all far more sympathetic to him in a way that by X3, he does not deserve.

"We were together for nearly six years," she tells Kurt that evening as she's perched on the countertop, watching him cook sauerkraut.

"Were you... happy?" he gestures with the potato knife. "In love?"

"It wasn't an easy life to have a relationship in," she considers. "I was often on undercover missions. But whenever there was a break-" she smiles at the memories. "--Az would whisk us off someplace away from the rest, and yeah, we were."

"Did he..."

She waits for him to formulate his thoughts. His German is still more intuitive than his English. She wonders if he would like help in toning down his accent, or if it would offend him.

"When you were - schwanger. Pregnant? pregnant. Was he.."

"It wasn't planned," she says almost gently. "But he was happy. We both were."

They had even talked excitedly about the opportunity for a mutated child to grow up with mutant parents, accepted from birth. Never to face the prejudice they had both faced themselves. At least, not from family.

Erik, when he found out, had been less than thrilled.

"--what happened?" Kurt startles her out of her thoughts. "How did I... you and he.."

"Az and Erik had been having tension for a few years, by then. Small things, disagreements about missions. Just... stuff. Erik wasn't happy when he found out I was pregnant, he had a deep-cover mission in Germany planned. Two months, tops. I said I could do it anyway, I was only about 4 months along. Az... didn't want me to go."

She remembers those few days full of loud arguments all too well. He hadn't wanted to let her go, had wanted to take her away and to hell with Magneto. That had been the wrong thing to say, because she couldn't turn her back on Erik .

"The mission was important," she continued softly. Though in hindsight not THAT important, not so important that she should have given up her child for it, but that was the benefit of hindsight. It had been very important to Erik, and she had felt so much duty and devotion for the man, been so tangled up in the complicated triangle of Charles, Erik and herself, that she had felt compelled to do as he had planned. "And I had sworn to be at Erik's side when he needed me, and he was so--" she can't quite bring herself to say fragile, "- _brittle_ , at the time."

She couldn't remember Erik ever being truly happy, but some times had been better than others, and that had been a dark time indeed.

"You did not want to abandon him," Kurt says, stabbing the potatoes with a fork.

She nodded. Not only had she sworn to herself, she had promised Charles, in their rare letters, that she would look after Erik, wouldn't let him get consumed by his demons.

It's not until now that she truly realises how futile that idea was, how damaging it was to herself to try. He had only slid further into his own darkness since he and Charles parted, as if the quest for vengeance - she could no longer pretend his motives had been justice - slowly ate away at his humanity, until she barely recognised him. She _hadn't_ recognised him, when the dart she'd taken instead of him burned away her mutation and he'd looked down on her as if she was-- as if he-- she hadn't recognised him. No trace of the young man full of righteous anger had seemed to remain, the one who was going to protect mutantkind, carve out a space in the world. In his place an empty old man who used people like he used metal.

"It wasn't going to be dangerous, and it would be two months at the most, so I didn't see the problem. Az and Erik had a huge fight, and that evening he told me to chose, because he was leaving. And I chose."

"You went to Deutschland."

"Yes."

She watches as he drains the potatoes and serves the sauerkraut, seemingly calm. It's perhaps not fair that she is telling him these things, things that surely must be painful for him, while absorbed by her own sorrow and regret.  

"Und then?"

"Look, are you..." she sits down at the table with him, and he piles food onto her plate. "Do you really want to hear this?"

"Yes, please. I wish to understand."

She takes a deep breath.

"The mission was fairly standard infiltration work, but I hadn't anticipated that being pregnant would affect my mutation, and it was very tiring to maintain my shape. I was exhausted all the time. And of course two months became ten weeks, then twelve... I wanted to get out of there, but leaving early would have ruined everything, and I think I felt.. like if I ruined the mission, everything would have been for nothing. I was afraid that I would have lost Az and Erik both."

She eats in silence for a while.

 "Then you came early," she finally continues, wanting to get the painful part over with. "I managed to finish most of the mission, and got myself to an abandoned house in the forest, and..."

"You were alone," Kurt states, sympathy in his eyes.

She swallows thickly, not sure if she can deal with that from him. She had been alone, so very alone, and crying out for Azazel, for Erik, most of all for Charles. For the time in her life when his arms could make everything better.

"Until you were there," she says, skipping the worst two days of her life, bar none. "And you were tiny and a little bit purple and just so perfect, so amazingly Az and me."

She smiles through her tears. "You teleported when you hiccoughed - just little jumps around the room. Into cupboards. It was..." she trails off.

"..but then I was stuck. I needed to get back to America, and I was weak enough that it would be a struggle to maintain a shape for the flight. On my own it was dangerous. With a blue baby with a tail that teleported around the plane every time he hiccoughed.."

And that had assumed that he would only teleport within the plane.

She trails into silence, forcing herself to eat. It's good. She remembers Azazel's joy in cooking, and wonders if they would like each other.

"It would have been impossible," Kurt concludes. "Would... my father - would he not have helped you?"

This is the part she has most trouble facing.

"At the time, I did not believe so," she says, not meeting his eyes. "We were... very angry, when he left. And I - I was too proud to beg him."

She feels a little sick hearing herself say it. She had been too proud to try the one thing that could have allowed her to keep Kurt with her. No matter how remote the chance that Azazel would have helped, she should have tried. And in hindsight, the chance hadn't been that remote. When she finally spoke to him again - years later - Az had been angry at the assumption that he would not have helped her, and angry that she had given up their son. It had taken fifteen years before they were back on friendly terms.

After a while Kurt gently prompts:

"The circus?"

"Az had told me about how he grew up in a circus, and I knew they were often mutant friendly places. The Munich circus was not far away at the time. I spent two days walking around there, you tucked away in my coat.. praying you would not get hiccoughs. Just looking around, getting a feel for the place. There were more mutants there, and I hoped you would be safe."

She realises there is no way to get through the next part without breaking down, and finally just summarises. "Then I left you with Ute."

"She told me you were very beautiful, and very sad. Untröstlich. And she was good to me," he continues. "I was happy in the circus."

Raven cries, because surely she does not deserve this much forgiveness? Then he comes over to hug her, and she shudders, the pain still huge and raw after all this time, and cries into his t-shirt. All those years, when she threw herself into missions, overextended herself, directed her rage at humans who made the world into a place where she had not been able to take her baby home. All those times when she had swallowed the sorrow and used it to fuel anger.

When she's finally calmed down she wants to tell him more about Azazel, wants to ask if Kurt wants to meet his father - but she's too exhausted and decides it'll have to wait.

He seems to have already concluded that. His large, strange-fingered hands cup her face with infinite gentleness, and he gives her a sweet smile.

"Danke schön, for telling me."

"Thank you for.. for listening" she says unsteadily. It's not what she wants to say, but the words 'not hating me' are stuck in her throat.

She's not sure how two such short-tempered, volatile people could possibly have produced such a gentle, patient soul. Somehow, the part of her that is still Mystique, feels he should be angry. With her, with the world. The simple acceptance of the ugliness the world throws at him worries her, though right now it is the easier path for her. She remembers being almost repulsed with his passivity, his acceptance, when she first met him a couple of years ago. Though she is milder now, it still worries her.

When she's calmed down he promises to return the next day, and teleports away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback? Please?


	10. Chapter 10

She wakes up with a terrible headache and her entire body feeling as if she's been punched - and she's pretty sure most of it isn't from the training session with Logan. Her mind feels raw and open, and she can't seem to focus on anything. Thoughts and memories keep coming up out of the blue, and she has none of her usual discipline in controlling them.

Even going outside to stick her head into a snowbank doesn't help. She laughs a little bitterly when she sees a scruffy looking cat watching her do it. It must think she is crazy, and she isn't so sure she is not.

The phone they've given her does have an advantage. She can tell the girls that today is not a good day for acting lessons without having to face them.

 

In the afternoon she hears the familiar sound of a teleporter appearing outside her door, and Kurt knocks. His expression grows concerned when she opens.

"Are you well?"

She musters a smile.

"It was a rough night, but I'm glad we talked."

"You look.. pale. You are not sick?"

"No, I'm fine."

He stays silent while she makes coffee.

"Did you want to know more?" she finally invites.

"I do have.. yes. If you do not mind..?"

She shakes her head and brings the coffee and cups to the table. She owes him answers, as many as he wants.

"A few years ago when we met, why did you not say anything? We spoke, and I - you never..."

"No," she says heavily, scratching her shoulder. "No, I didn't. I knew it would be a difficult conversation, and we were all so worried about Charles - it did not seem the right moment."

He seems to accept that, and she is glad. The additional reason, the one she'd prefer not to go into, was that Erik had never wanted her to mention Kurt, had in fact done his level best to pretend the whole chapter had never happened. She knew it was because he felt guilty, had seen it in his eyes, felt it rolling off of him as clear as if she was a telepath. Nonetheless she had resented it as much as she had welcomed it.

"What is my--  Az - what is he like?"

It seems an impossibly enormous question, and she grasps around for the right beginning. Simple. Start simple.

"His skin is red, and he has a tail like yours. He is a teleporter. He joined Erik at the same time I did. He is Russian, originally from Volograd. He grew up in a circus, where they called him Azazel, because he played the devil in their plays."

She drinks her coffee, trying to explain the man, do him justice.

"He is a good natured man - he likes practical jokes... he was good to me. But not a kind man... you must understand, he was a mercenary."

Kurt tilts his head as if he's unsure of the word, and she sighs, not liking this.

"He was a killer. Not out of principle or anger or hatred-" though there had been a few times, "-but because it was his job, it was part of the mission."

It kills her to see his face, and she wonders if he thinks she says it to be cruel to either or both of them. But she does not want to put these men into contact with each other if this fundamental truth cannot be accepted.

She reaches out her hand and grasps Kurt's, smiling sadly at his expression.

"I am sorry, that must be hard to hear, that both your parents..."

"Did you...?" he gestures with his free hand, unable to summon the words.

"Not like him, but yes, sometimes."

In fact she had made few real kills - she had always refused to simply be a hitman. More often she had put people into a position to die easily. It had seemed an important line at the time. Semantics, she felt now, at least they would be to Kurt.

 "Why do you tell me this?"

"Because I can arrange for you to meet him, but you need to understand this about him, I think, before you decide. His morals may be... difficult to understand. He is not sorry."    




Kurt looks taken aback, and she wonders if he thinks she is sorry about her deeds. For the most part she isn't. She regrets certain missions, and she regrets the after effect of some of the Brotherhood deeds, but she hasn't suddenly acquired her brother's scruples with her humanity. There are still things that need doing, for mutantkind, and if it comes to her being the right person to do them, she will. She likes Logan because he understands that.

"Do you think he... would want to meet me?"

"I believe he would, yes. Would you like me to contact him?"

He looks uncertain.

"Or do you want to think about it for a while?"

"Bitte schön," he says softly, and she wonders if he is afraid he won't be able to accept Azazel, or if he is afraid not to be accepted himself.

"Very well," she nods, glad she had left it until talking to him. The choice should be his.

She asks him to tell her at life in the circus, and very soon he is telling her with enthusiasm, now pacing, now perched on a chair, with all the restless physicality that she remembers so well from Azazel. He shows her some of his tricks, and it doesn't take long before they are both smiling.

 

 

The next day Raven wakes up to a strange, muted light. The dome has been covered by a layer of new snow and the forest has that odd, quiet quality to it that makes her take deep breaths as if they cleanse her. A trail of cat paws is the only thing marring the perfect white blanket. She makes a mental note to put down new kibble. The scruffy cat has so far been too shy to come inside, and sleeps in the hay-filled shelter she's put down a little way into the forest, but she doesn't think it'll take much longer.

The walk to the outhouse is chilling, but she's stoked the fire on waking and the stove is already heating up water for a bath in the deep, square tub. On days like these she's tempted to figure out a way to make the stove heat the bath directly, and just stay in there all day. There must be some way to lead the water to the stove via a pipe and then back to the tub. Spending all day soaking with a book sounds pretty good today, and it would be a relief from the eczema that has spread over her whole body.

Erik would know how to get the water flow right - engineering was always his thing - and could bend the pipes to boot. He'd probably enjoy it, she could ask--

Oh.

She thinks she's managed to shake off the uneasiness by the time Marie and Rahne come over for the first acting lesson, but they still hesitate in the doorway, asking if they should come back when she feels better. She waves them in a little impatiently. Even if she does feel a little unsettled, it isn't like she's some brittle thing who hasn't worked through whatever life threw at her without so much as blinking.

 Raven has never taught anybody anything, and isn't sure where to start, but the girls bring up movement themselves. Rahne is more girl than wolf today - apparently she slowly morphs on the continuum between human and wolf, and doesn't yet have it under control. 

They spend an hour and a half exploring motion, different styles of walking and using arms. She sends the girls off with the assignment to pick somebody in the mansion and observe them carefully, so they'll have something to work for next time. To her surprise she's enjoyed it, the eagerness of the students and the exploration of talents not for deception or survival, but for the simple joy of it.

 

Kurt comes over that evening, only briefly because it's TV night at the mansion. (Incidentally, does she want to join them? They're watching Dr Who. Raven doesn't feel up to it.)

Kurt has decided he would like to meet his father, and she promises to contact Azazel.

She wonders if she should discuss it with Hank and Storm and Logan first. Especially Hank, who has encountered Az and has every reason not to want him on the grounds. But then it seems pre-emptive if she hasn't even spoken to him in a couple of years. She can start with just catching up, feeling him out, before she tells him about Kurt.

Yeah. Better to email first, make the contact, then talk to Hank.

 

 

When she heads to the mansion the next afternoon, Ororo opens the front door.

"Oh God, are you okay? Come in," she gestures, looking from Raven's down coat to the snowboots she's reluctantly put on. "You look _frozen_! Did your heating break?"

"No.. it was a chilly walk, but I'm fine," she said, a little bemused by the concern. "Can I use a computer for a while?"

"Sure, you know where it is. There's hot chocolate in the kitchen, get yourself a mug first, okay?"

"I will, thank you," Raven says, feeling strange and warm and welcome.

It's overcast outside, and though it's only afternoon the kitchen is dark without the lights on, but she finds her way easily enough. Cradling the hot cup in her hands, she aims herself in the direction of the garderobe, nodding at one of the kids that passes her by.

She puts her coat in the garderobe and is about to ascend the stairs to the computer room when she catches a glimpse in the mirror. In a reflex she looks.

And sees her own face.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of this story, but not of the arc - [Blue Are The Life Giving Waters ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/250669) is the sequel. It just seems to work better split up.


End file.
